Numbers Spray & Water Dump

Hooray for warmer weather and the ability to do fun learning activities outdoors! For this easy counting and number recognition activity you only need four things and one of them is water! So lets get outside and start counting. Warning: this is a very wet activity but really fun! Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

Supplies:

Sidewalk Chalk

Spray bottle

Small container to pour water (such as measuring cup)

Water

Set Up:

Your prep is very simple. Using the sidewalk chalk, write down numbers in a random order from 1-10 or 20 or beyond depending on your little one’s ability. As you can see my toddler wanted help with the prep, which I always allow.

Grab the spray bottle first and hand it to your toddler. Then you call out a number and let your toddler find it. When they do ask them to spray it the number of times thatmatch the number. For instance, if you called out 16 have them spray it 16 times.

Count the number of sprays together. Using a spray bottle like this is a great way to strengthen little fingers to prepare them for writing and holding pencils. It’s also super fun and my toddler loved it.

When I called out a low number like 3, my toddler sprayed the number counting to 3 but kept on going counting because the number 3 still hadn’t disappeared. Which is amazing! As long as she is counting I am happy!

MY TURN!

I love extending activities, so half way through the life of this activity I switched it up. I asked her to call out a number and I sprayed. Now I know my numbers pretty well but as I was looking for them I feigned that I couldn’t find it. My toddler was quick to help me out and we counted the number of sprays together.

NOW COMES THE WET PART

Time to switch it up again. We had our water table near by and used it to fill our measuring cup (not too full). I called out a number again, 21, my toddler searched for it and this time when she found it she got to dump 21 buckets of water on the number!

We counted the number of cups we dumped on the number and a few more just for fun! Things got a little wet and that is why we did this at the end. Use a small measuring cup to ensure that each dumb is not too big and let them enjoy dumping the water. My toddler loved this part the best!